Apps/Games

Jun

Autodesk Releases Inventor Publisher Viewer To The Android Market

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

If you're familiar with Autodesk's Inventor Publisher software, then you know what a Godsend it can be for creating and viewing rich, three-dimensional instructions. Up until now, it has been lacking on thing, though - what if you're not at at PC when you need to view said instructions? Suddenly, the benefits of Inventor Publisher were not as glorious. That has all changed now, though, as Autodesk has released an Inventor Publisher Viewer app into the Android Market.

Like its name suggests, the viewer allows you to use instructions created in Inventor Publisher on your Android phone or tablet. That's right - this app is optimized for phones and tablets alike, adding even more functionality to its already strong skillset.

Jun

Yelp App Updated To Add New Groupon Now! Style "Deals" Feature

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, Apps/Games, News

Yelp received an update today, and it adds a brand-new mobile-exclusive feature called Deals, which is essentially a competitor to Groupon's Groupon Now!. The Deals button found on the updated app integrates Yelp Special Offers, Check-In Offers, and its time/location-sensitive Deals all into a single, location-based menu.

Like Groupon Now!, you can only view offers within a certain distance of your current location (which is to say, it can't be manually set). The fact that it puts together all of Yelp's discount systems into a single list is really pretty handy, but unfortunately, there's no option to filter or sort the results.

Jun

New Game: Ball-Hop Bowling Replicates Skee-Ball To a T, Wasted Money Included

Posted by Matt Demers in App Reviews, Games, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Everyone who's been to a midway knows the format of skee-ball; for a couple bucks you ramp some wooden balls into scoring targets in order to get tickets to exchange for prizes. A new game for Android, Ball-Hop Bowling, recreates the whole experience, rip-off and all.

Maybe "rip-off" is a bit unfair: Ball-Hop Bowling is free, and gives you the "true" skee-ball experience without having to pay. However, if you're looking for any type of progression in this game beyond the default table/ball, be prepared to shell out some cash, or at least hours of your time.

Like real skee-ball, Ball-Hop Bowling is a quick experience; your nine balls seem like a lot, but they can be blown through extremely quick.

Jun

New App: Kaspersky Unveils Honeycomb-Compatible Tablet Security

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Applications, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News, Tips

One of the geek community's favored anti-virus solutions on Windows, Kaspersky has recently made its move to secure the world of all things Android. Next up the company's sleeve is Kaspersky Tablet Security (clever name, right?), which brings Kaspersky's virus protection to Honeycomb (3.0 and 3.1, plus non-Honeycomb 2.1+) tablets. And it also runs on your phone, which allowed me (I am tablet-less) to take these screenshots:

Basically, it's Kaspersky Mobile Security 9 spruced up for tablets, with all the theft protection, call blocking, SMS, and other phone-specific features removed. It is kind of handy to have those superfluous features axed (except theft protection?) for the purpose of navigating the menus, but it seems like this app doesn't add much functionality over its phone counterpart, aside from a streamlined (and admittedly much better) home screen.

Jun

[Updated] Gameloft Announces Upcoming Games For The Remainder Of 2011

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Games, News

Update: It looks like there was a bit of a mix up, as these games are for feature phones, not Android. Here is Gameloft's official statement on the matter:

I can confirm there has been a confusion. The lineup we have announced yesterday is only for feature phones (java and brew).
We do not announce in advance our line up of games for Android and iOS. Usually we announce our games for iPhone and Android separately (one announcement for each game).
Sorry for the confusion.

Original Post:

In an out-of-character move, Gameloft has given us a sneak peak into the future by releasing its full catalog of games expected to hit the last half of this year.

Jun

New App: ObscuraCam Automatically Detects, Blurs Faces And Strips Metadata From Your Photos

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, Apps/Games, News, Tips

OK, this is probably one of the cooler apps I've seen in a while. ObscuraCam is an open source photo anonymizer project made in concert with the folks over at Witness.org - a human rights violation watchdog. Why is a human rights organization helping you blur those photos you took that night you accidentally [insert potential human rights violation here] but still thought would be hilarious to upload to Facebook?

Well, Witness wants this app to be used by political dissidents in countries where things like facial identification and metadata scraping are major barriers to posting photos of political protests online.

Jun

LauncherPro Developer Releases New App "UberMusic" To The Wilds of Beta

Posted by Matt Demers in Applications, News

LauncherPro developer Fredrico Carnales made headlines a couple of months ago by announcing that, on top of maintaining his popular homescreen replacement, he was going to tackle development on a music app. That app, now named UberMusic, has made it out to the public in the form of a downloadable beta.

And damn, does this app look good. It downloads artist/album data in the background, allowing the menu wallpapers to be spiced up with some truly awesome art. These images are artist-specific and add a little bit of flair to what could've been a very boring app.

UberMusic also comes with a homescreen widget, and functions a lot like the stock player; however, there's some deeper options - like Last.FM scrobbling and headphone controls - that cause it to stand out from the pack.

Jun

Words With Friends Loses Honeycomb Compatibility, Zynga Support Has No Clue

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Games, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

If you play the popular Scrabble clone Words With Friends on a Honeycomb tablet, then you may have noticed something a bit odd lately: it no longer shows up in the app tray. That's because Zynga - apparently unknowingly to its support staff - dropped Honeycomb support from the game. When one of our readers tried to contact Zynga asking why WWF was no longer supported on Android 3.0+, this is the response that was received:

Thank you for contacting Zynga With Friends Customer Support!
Currently, Words With Friends and Chess With Friends are only supported on Apple iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch) and Android devices.

Jun

Play Angry Birds On Your Nook Color? Head Into Barnes And Noble For A Free Unlockable Character

Posted by Matt Demers in Games, News

Angry Birds fans who play the game on a Nook Color now have a reason to trudge to Barnes & Noble. The book retailer will be offering a promotion for the game, allowing users who play the game while connected to its Wi-Fi to receive the Mighty Eagle downloadable character free of charge.

The Mighty Eagle character allows you to insta-clear pesky levels, essentially giving you a "level skip" cheat for the popular puzzler. Developer Rovio is promising more rewards for those who make return trips to the store - could this be the beginning of more location-aware promoting?

While Angry Birds is a free download to "regular" Android devices, it costs a full $3 for Nook Color tablets.

Jun

Transdroid Torrent Manager Removed From Android Market By Google

Posted by David Ruddock in Android OS, Apps/Games, News

I never know how to feel about torrent (in this case, management) applications. On the one hand, torrenting is a brilliant and efficient way to share information in a collective and low-cost (read: free) fashion. On the other, it's the single largest gateway to piracy in existence. And it could kill you.

But it's clear torrenting applications are very much legal. So why has Google removed a popular torrent management application, Transdroid, from the Android Market? There's a number of such apps on the Market, and Transdroid's competitors are still standing. TorrentFreak thinks they know what's up.

Transdroid's developer page featured a screenshot showing an obvious example of copyright infringement in action, seen below: